DIY: Synthetic muscles from fishing line and thread
How to make artificial muscles from fishing line
At the same time, the manufacturing technology itself turned out to be surprisingly simple. No sophisticated synthetic polymers were needed for artificial muscles: Ray Baughman and his colleagues simply took a polymer thread from those used for the production of fishing line or synthetic threads and twisted it into a spiral. This spiral could twist and stretch when the temperature changed. It is curious that the technological process could be changed so that the effect was reversed, that is, so that the thread curled when cooling, and stretched when heated. By varying the number of threads in the bundle, it is possible to achieve other mechanical characteristics of the artificial "muscle fiber".
Synthetic fibers made of six strands of different thicknesses:
the upper one is made of 2.45 mm thick threads, the lower one is made of 150 microns thick threads.
(Photo of the authors of the work.)
And these characteristics are truly impressive. Firstly, compared to conventional muscles, which can contract by only 20% of their length, artificial ones are able to shrink by half. Such muscles, of course, do not know rapid fatigue either. If you combine together a hundred elementary fibers, then such a muscle will be able to lift more than 700 kg. Relative to the weight, the fibers can develop a power of 7.1 hp per kg, which corresponds, according to the researchers, to the power of a jet engine.
The engine for them, as already mentioned, is the temperature drop, which can be provided in any way – even with the help of a chemical reaction, even through electricity (yes, even with your breath, warm these fibers). As for the fibers themselves, scientists especially stress the exceptional simplicity of their manufacture: they say, any student will do this during a normal laboratory, the main thing is to observe the physical conditions under which you will deform the thread. The genius of the authors of the idea is that they managed to guess the huge physical potential in this trivial polymer construction.
Actually, the simplicity of these muscles probably prevents you from immediately evaluating the whole revolutionary nature of the invention. Although the researchers, of course, demonstrated its possible application: adapted to the window, they closed and opened it depending on the ambient temperature. In addition, it was possible to create a woven fabric from the fibers, the porosity of which again changed depending on the temperature, and from here it is easy to imagine "smart" clothes that will ventilate you in the heat and save heat in the cold.
But, of course, the lion's share of fantasies around and around artificial muscles is given to robotics. It is clear that such fibers can become a direct analogue of human muscles in robots, with the help of which they can even change facial expressions. Synthetic muscles will be useful both when lifting weights and when performing delicate surgical manipulations (if we imagine medical devices of the future).
In the past, such fibers were tried to be made from carbon nanotubes. According to Ray Bofman, who also went through this stage, experiments with nanotubes were successful, but, firstly, such "nanomuscles" are very difficult to manufacture and extremely expensive, and secondly, they were reduced by only 10% of their length, that is, they were inferior even to ordinary living muscles, not not to mention the newly revealed polymer fibers.
We still have only one question, which concerns efficiency and economy: how much heat (and, consequently, electrical or chemical energy) should be spent on their mechanical work? The authors admit that, like all artificial muscles in general, their fibers are not particularly effective in this sense, but there are certain hopes that in this case it will be possible to optimize energy costs quite quickly.
The results of the study are published in the journal Science (Haines et al., Artificial Muscles from Fishing Line and Sewing Thread).
Prepared based on the materials of the University of Texas at Dallas: Researchers Create Powerful Muscles From Fishing Line, Thread.
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